Project Summary - Administrative Core __________________________________________________________________________ All Collaborative Center?s activities will be managed, coordinated, and supervised through the Administrative Core under the direction of the PI, Professor Christian Happi, who possesses many years of experience in research and project management. The primary task of the Administrative Core is to facilitate accomplishment of the stated goals of the Collaborative center to (1) Utilize Microbial Metagenomics for ?Viral Pathogen Characterization?; (2) develop? ?field Diagnostics for P? athogen Surveillance;? (3) Use Clinical, Genomic, and Immunological Data for Studying ?Viral and Host Biology;? and (4) Establish a comprehensive E? ducational Core for training, capacity building, and technology transfer. In addition to supporting the above stated projects and cores, the administrative core will leverage its network with academic, private sector, and public sector institutions to provide career development and enrichment opportunities for academic trainees and early-career scientists in the collaborative network, including . Each project has a particular emphasis area based on the expertise of the investigators, providing a particular capacity (platform) that is available to the group as a whole. The functional and thematic integration of these projects and cores allows quick transfer of knowledge, technology, and resources within the collaborative center. Thus, steering effort and resources toward findings showing the greatest promise and need. The Administrative Core will build upon well-established collaborations between the institutions stated in this proposal to: (1). Evaluate research and development progress and assist to facilitate collaborations, problem solving, and creative ideas; (2) Facilitate communications within the Center, through the steering committee meetings, teleconferences, regular communication; (3) Establish and coordinate the activities of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), whose role is to provide overall guidance to the Center; (3) Coordinate the presentation and publication of data, resource and model sharing; (4) Organize and chair the annual consortium meeting activities. (5) Identify problems and propose solutions through the steering committee and engagement of the H3Africa consortium; (6) Provide semi-annual progress reports in a format to be defined by the H3Africa Consortium after award; (7) Manage the Intellectual Property resources of the Collaborative center and work with all stakeholders to facilitate the commercial development of relevant discoveries. In short, this core will create and maintain systems to ensure excellent performance of the proposal?s stated aims, efficient communication between partner institutions, and data dissemination to the broader H3Africa Network.